


Lieder Ohne Worte

by sagredo



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagredo/pseuds/sagredo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson contemplates Holmes' violin playing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lieder Ohne Worte

This is not the first attempt I have made at setting some description of Sherlock Holmes' violin playing down on paper. As I know that the majority of the music he produces will never be recorded by his own pen, I feel that the best I can do, lacking sufficient knowledge of music theory to preserve his compositions myself, is to afford them the kind of description which an author might. I have long harbored suspicions that such a description might allow an unparallelled glimpse into his mind – and, perhaps, his heart.

If he has none than I cannot explain where his music might come from. When he knows he has an audience he is skilled enough, but when he plays only for himself I find myself held rapt by what I hear, drifting up through the floorboards like a message in a bottle not meant for me but nonetheless carried inextricably in to shore. Rarely have I been so moved by the playing of even the most lauded of concert violinists, and I cannot imagine my companion producing such melodies without equal feeling.

Tonight what I hear is many layered and intricate. I can imagine long, swift fingers dancing nimbly over strings in a pattern only my friend understands, finding their way as though by some peculiar instinct, producing a sound as though not one but two instruments play in harmony. The low notes drone and the high notes ripple and bob as though the surface of a deep lake had been disturbed, and then the low notes swell and rise, seamlessly taking over. Here and there his bow strikes double stops, swoops over triple stops, the tempo and volume increasing with feeling until clear, piercing notes are played on one string alone, a solo by one of the two phantom instruments he has evoked.

It is not a happy piece. It dips into a theme which is repeated again and again in a steady crescendo until the strings are shouting an accusation. There is something haunting and transient in it, something which puts one in mind of a lonely, clandestine flight – though from what I cannot say. Each phrase seems to end not on a final note, but with a question, strangely incomplete, as if the player were at a loss for what to do.

The music grows dogged. It is quiet and low, now, the violin growling. The bow saws at the strings. The notes climb and then triple stops come again, played almost as grace notes, the bow no longer swooping over the strings but slashing like a saber. The melody dances in a series of thrusts and parries, dueling with an unseen opponent. I have never seen the player fence, but I imagine him so engaged now – long limbs graceful and desperate, movements quick and balanced, aggression tempered into something beautiful, violence elevated to art form. The violin seems to walk a razor's edge between brutality and civility before fatigue slips into the music. The tempo slows gradually, as though dragged down by a weight. I recall long marches through afghan desserts. The music becomes steadily more simple, the complexity of it unravelling thread by thread, until it sounds as if it can do no more than put one foot in front of the other. There is one last low, drawn out growl, half threat and half surrender. Then silence.

All is completely still for a moment. Then, in the sitting room below, I hear the dull, truncated hum of unintentionally struck strings as the violin is placed in its case, and the muffled click of latches. Footsteps cross the hearthrug, and then fall silent. I do not hear Holmes retire.

I myself will undoubtedly sit up late, watching the lamp gutter, long after I have laid my pen down. I will think of my friend sitting alone before the hearth in the room below mine, perhaps smoking a contemplative cigarette. I will remember the look of haunted, fire-lit grey eyes, made to appear the brighter by dark circles beneath, and begin to fear hearing the sound of a desk drawer being unlocked and opened, and the activity that must undoubtedly follow. I will wonder, for the thousandth time, what deeper secrets he may keep locked away, and worry over his self-imposed remoteness. Inevitably, I will ask myself what good I am doing him, then, by remaining alone in my room myself.

But, I will not go down. A nature such as Holmes' would brook no intrusion, and I understand that this is neither the time nor place to try his boundaries. It is, as it always is, consolation enough to imagine the way things would be were I not here, a flight of stairs above him. He would still be the sole occupant of a quiet sitting room, but no one would have heard the music that had filled it moments before. No one would have preserved what they could of his playing in prose, or been moved by the piece, or tried to understand it. He would be sitting up alone, and no one would know. Who could say if anyone would be thinking of him? Because I am here, he has this much, at least.

And, in the morning when we both come to breakfast with tired, sleepless eyes, he will know.


End file.
